by Aaron Oster
“Komura the Winged almost destroyed Reign City,” Herald Duncan said, finally speaking up for the first time. “I very much doubt he would be willing to help.”
“Then what about the Scion of Tales, or the Scion of Quaking Skies?” she asked. “Surely one of you has to know where they are.”
“Last I heard, the Sky Quaker was in the far east, near the Emerald Sea. The Scion of Tales, on the other hand, hasn’t been seen in centuries,” Duncan replied. “For all we know, she’s dead.”
“She’s still very much alive,” Hermit said. “I can assure you all of that much. But even if we managed to contact one of them, do any of you think we’d be able to convince them to help?”
None of the others said anything in response. They all knew how the Scions were. They would act if they felt like it and nothing anyone said would convince them otherwise.
“Why exactly did Komura the Winged make an appearance in one of your cities?” the small woman asked again.
“How should I know?” Pelata answered.
“He thought there was an Eternal present,” Ikari said, earning a glare from both Pelata and Duncan.
“An Eternal?”
There was an almost immediate reaction to that word. Although that stage of advancement was only hypothetical as far as they were concerned, all of them one day hoped to reach those heights. The fact that none of the Scions were even close, even after centuries of holding their titles, made the stage of advancement above even more tantalizing.
“Calm down,” Ikari said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Turns out it was only Duncan’s freak son. Don’t know how Komura mixed him up with an Eternal, though.”
Duncan was already halfway out of his seat, his aura flaring to encompass the entire room. A split-second later, the entire building seemed to tremble as all of the gathered Sovereigns unleashed their Cores, their power so immense that small cracks began to spread in the air as reality began to fracture.
The other non-Sovereigns all immediately dropped, their bodies plastered to the ground as the immense pressure threatened to crush them. However, Hermit noticed that unlike the others here, the girl standing behind Duncan was completely unharmed, and judging by the look of shock on her face, it had nothing to do with her.
“He’s that close?” the Core said.
“Clearly,” Hermit replied as the sheer force of Duncan’s spirit intensified, his body becoming shrouded in gleaming silver so dense that it appeared to be a layer of steel.
Behind him, a black gate began shimmering into existence, rippling in the air as though seen through a pool of water.
“Why don’t we all just take a breath and calm down?” Pelata said, seeing that this situation was growing extremely volatile. “We came to discuss how to prevent our destruction, not start a war amongst ourselves!”
“You’re telling us that that isn’t a declaration of war?” Ikari exclaimed, pointing to the Black Torii gate as it solidified.
“Don’t speak of war, woman,” Duncan said, his voice reverberating through the room. “You insult my son to my face and expect me to just sit idly by?!”
The room shook once more, and dust began raining down from the ceiling above.
“Well, this is going well,” the Core said, as the power around Duncan began to intensify even further.
Hermit let out a loud sigh – not that anyone could hear it above the rumbling and cracking. He hadn’t wanted to do this now, but seeing as things looked to be falling apart, drastic measures needed to be taken.
“Hold on,” he said. “This is going to be extreme.”
“Your son nearly got us all killed! That Beast should have been put down at birth. Interbreeding with Beasts like that is unnatural!” Ikari yelled back.
Several of the gathered Sovereigns started at that and Duncan’s face grew dark with rage.
People at their level of power had to learn to control their emotions. Even the smallest slip could cause untold damage. It seemed that Ikari was trying to get Herald Duncan, the most powerful Sovereign here, to explode. Perhaps she thought that if she got him to attack her, the other Sovereigns would interfere and gang up on him. Together, they could likely take him down.
But angry as Duncan might be, he wasn’t stupid. One didn’t get to be where he was by making rash decisions. He would step back into the solid Black Torii gate standing behind him. Only once he emerged a newly born Scion would he attack, and by that point, even all of them together would have little chance of stopping him.
Hermit strained his Core, his muscles going taut and veins standing out all over his body as he pushed. It was still a bit soon for him to be doing this, but with the state of things, he had little choice but to assert his authority.
His power flared, the red light bending around his body as an 11th Black stripe appeared on his Belt. Everyone turned, shocked, as a Black Torii gate appeared at his back as well, perfectly matching that of Herald Duncan.
A dead silence fell over the room as Hermit, red-faced and panting, glared around at them all.
“How about we all take a breath and calm down?”
28
Roy groaned as Aika pulled him to his feet. His head still throbbed with the strain he’d placed it under before, and his Core felt as though it had been wrung out like an old rag. Despite that, the small bead of gleaming gold remained, sitting at the center of his Core. He could feel it. It was heavy and dense like a thick syrup, and radiated a sense of power that dwarfed that of Qi. It wasn’t just the purity, though. There was more, something that Roy almost thought he understood but didn’t quite get just yet.
“Are you sure it’s Chakra?” Aika asked again as he opened his eyes.
“I’m sure,” Roy replied. “It can’t be anything else.”
“It’s…”
“Impossible, I know,” Roy said, placing a hand over his chest.
The earliest he should even be able to form Chakra was at Purple-Belt, though using it safely would require he become a Red-Belt. But for a Blue-Belt to have it was impossible.
Nearly as impossible as advancing randomly in the middle of a fight, Roy thought.
“Maybe it has something to do with how you advance?” Aika asked, voicing his thoughts aloud.
“It has to be,” Roy said, studying the small bead of Chakra once more. “Question is, is it safe for me to keep fighting with that thing sitting there?”
“Why not?” Aika asked. “So long as you don’t actually use it, you should be fine.”
Roy sighed, rubbing at his temples and wishing he knew what was happening to him.
“Geon? Any ideas?” he asked the Core.
“Nothing,” Geon replied. “Unless you’ve been lying to me about how strong you really are, I can honestly say that I don’t know something.”
Roy felt cool fingers on his arm and opened his eyes to see Aika looking at him worriedly.
“Are you going to be okay?”
Roy let out a long, shuddering breath.
“To be honest, I have no idea,” he replied. “Ever since advancing to Green, nothing seems to be normal. From my random advancements to discovering techniques that should have taken months, if not years, to figure out. Now I have corrupted Qi coming into my Core, and I’m apparently making Chakra—”
“Forging.”
“What?”
“It’s what the process of making Chakra is called. Like you weave Qi from Essence, you forge Chakra from Qi,” she explained.
“Well. Problem solved then,” Roy said, throwing his arms in the air.
“We’ll figure this out,” Aika said soothingly. “I know it has to be scary, not knowing what’s happening to you. But I’m sure the answers are in here somewhere.”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore,” Roy muttered.
He’d felt nothing since he’d come in here, and his Core hadn’t been acting up — until he’d accidentally forged Chakra out of nowhere.
“How about we keep moving?” Aik
a suggested, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Training and fighting is always a good distraction. Plus, we still need to find another safe zone before we can stop for the day.”
Roy sighed. The last thing he wanted to do right now was keep going. He wanted to turn around, leave and never come back. But if he did that, he’d never get the answers he was looking for.
“Fine,” he muttered unenthusiastically. “Let’s go.”
Aika patted him on the shoulder once more, then set off down the tunnel. The rest of the day wasn’t fun, especially seeing as they had to keep fighting the spiky Beasts, and distracted as Roy was, he managed to pick up several painful injuries by the time they found another safe zone.
Like the first, it was completely bare, but this time, neither of them wanted to move onward. Aika had been forced to do the brunt of the fighting, as Roy just hadn’t been able to put in the same effort as before, and with the Beasts being as strong as they were, saying that the fights were difficult would be putting it mildly.
Roy slumped, staring down at his hands as Aika cycled beside him. Like her, he was covered in blood. His arms were streaked red, the front of his robes splattered a dark green and smeared with mud. He’d bruised one of the bones in his left forearm during one of the battles where a spiny Beast had ricocheted off the wall at an odd angle and his Armorer technique had failed. It throbbed slowly, along with all his other cuts and bruises.
He was lucky Aika had been there along with him. He doubted he’d have survived that fight otherwise.
“What is going on with you?” Geon demanded, not for the first time that day. “You’re all mopey and sad, and it’s annoying. You almost got me killed!”
“Nice to see how much you care about me,” Roy muttered.
“I clearly said that I almost died,” Geon snapped back. “What part of that did you misunderstand?”
Roy ignored him and tried instead to concentrate on cycling, but his mind refused to rest. There was just so much uncertainty and so much that didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sure why that small spec of Chakra had finally set him off, but now, he was finding it impossible to keep a single coherent thought in his mind, let alone function normally.
He growled, getting up and starting to pace, finding himself unable to sit still. It was as though a caged animal lived inside of him. Roy stopped, his eyes suddenly going wide.
Was that it? Did this have something to do with his mother and why he felt the way he did? Did Beasts develop differently, perhaps gaining access to higher forms of energy earlier? Perhaps his half-Beast nature was only now showing itself, and that was why his Core was acting up.
“No,” Geon snapped when he asked, slamming their connection closed and robbing Roy of what little hope he had.
Then what? he almost screamed. What is it?!
He wanted to rage, to start smashing and blowing things up until he felt better. At first, he’d only been worried. But as time went on, that worry became fear, and fear turned to anger. Now, he felt like a pent-up ball of rage on the verge of exploding. Aika was the only one here he could yell at, but he wouldn’t do that. She’d been good to him and always supported him. She came in here, even though she could see no way this would help her.
She’d done it all for him.
Who could he yell at? Who would bear the wrath of all this anger?
The world suddenly went dark around him, the stone room disappearing into an empty void. Before Roy could panic, a very familiar person appeared, a wide smile plastered on his face.
“You!” Roy hissed.
“Me,” Azure said, still smiling.
“This is all your fault!” he yelled, lunging, his fingers clamping around the man’s throat and squeezing for all he was worth.
***
Ferry sat alone in the darkened forest, all of the guilt and sadness of what she’d done sitting heavily on her chest. She didn’t know why she’d acted the way she did, only that when Aika had gotten between her and Roy, she’d snapped. And when Roy had told her off for grabbing him, it had hurt more than anything ever had before.
Her heart ached, though she had no idea why.
Geon had talked to her and said that staying away from him, for now, would be good for the both of them. He said that she was growing up and needed a chance to adjust. Of course, she had no idea what that even meant, though now that she pondered it, she was thinking more clearly.
When she’d advanced from Green to Blue, her perception had shifted. The actions of those around her became clearer and her understanding of things changed in small and subtle ways. Where she had felt a warm, fuzzy feeling around Roy before, it was now practically scorching, though that wasn’t all.
The very idea of Aika being alone with him made her angry and afraid, like she would rip Aika’s head from her shoulders if she saw them so much as holding hands. And that, more than anything, frightened her.
Aika was her friend. She liked Aika. So why did she want to hurt her? Why did she want to tear everyone and everything that stood between her and Roy to pieces?
She pressed her face into her hands – a gesture that she’d seen Roy do many times when he’d been worried – but it offered her no comfort, nor any reprieve from the anger or bloodlust.
She breathed, feeling the Darkness Essence flooding her lungs and channels, even without her making an effort to do so. It was all around her, after all. The darkness had been calming all her life. It was both slow and fast, calm and wild. It was the perfect Path to follow.
Maybe training here until Roy came back from his trip into the Dungeon wasn’t such a bad idea. It would distract her from all her new thoughts and feelings and would help her grow stronger. Even if she didn’t figure out what was wrong by the time he returned, she’d have at least grown.
Recently, she’d been falling behind in her training, distracted by other things – like the bad-smelling man who’d taken Roy. Both Roy and Aika were growing quickly, and if she wanted to prove that she was better than that human, Ferry would need to be stronger still.
Lifting her face from her hands, Ferry gazed around the dark forest, easily picking out details that others simply couldn’t unless they were on a Darkness Path. This place, unlike what everyone else seemed to think, was very much alive.
Creatures lurked in the shadows, just waiting to pounce, and although they weren’t all that powerful, every little bit would help in pushing her forward and making her stronger. Pushing herself to her feet, Ferry steeled herself and set off to begin training in earnest.
When Roy returned, he wouldn’t even recognize her.
29
“Hey! Take it easy!” Azure said as Roy tightened his fingers, attempting – and miserably failing – to choke the man to death.
In fact, no matter how hard Roy squeezed, Azure’s skin didn’t even give an inch. He might as well have been trying to choke a rock for all the good it would have done him. Still, that didn’t stop him from trying.
“This is all your fault! I know it is!” Roy yelled, his voice sounding oddly muffled in the darkness.
“Listen,” Azure said, not even trying to stop Roy from choking him. “I managed to slip away from my babysitter for a couple of minutes, but she will notice that I’m gone if I don’t go back soon. So, you can either spend the time we have yelling at me, or you can let me talk.”
Roy glared at the man, wanting to do nothing more than continue to choke him. But his need for answers outweighed petty and pointless revenge.
“Fine,” Roy said, letting go. “Where the hell are we anyway?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Azure said.
Roy glowered at him but didn’t interrupt as the man continued speaking.
“Now that you know your origins, I can give you a little more information on what’s going on with you and why so many impossibilities seem to be happening around you. In short, your Core was removed when you were a child. Your father sent you away, and your mother came to protect you, but the process of
removing your Core took a lot out of her.
“You weren’t supposed to find another Core, and when you did, the Path of Power was the only option because it had already been your Path beforehand. When you advanced to Green, your old Core, which is currently located at the very bottom of this Dungeon, started to try and rejoin with you.
“It’s been slowly trickling in, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Now that you’re in the Dungeon, though, it should be more subdued until you reach it.
“Before your Core was pulled from you, you were already a high Dan Purple-Belt, and all the random power fluctuations you’ve been experiencing is as a result of that. In short, once you’ve reabsorbed your old power, everything should settle down.”
Roy stared at the man, wondering if he was making all of this up just to mess with him.
“You’re joking, right?” Roy asked. “I know how young I was when I first came to the Shah clan, and at that age, I should maybe have been a White-Belt. What you’re telling me makes no sense.”
“And yet, that is exactly what happened,” Azure said, peering back over his shoulder. “I realize it sounds crazy, but there’s a why reason all of the Qi you’ve been absorbing is corrupted. In short, you were beyond wild back then, turning into a real monster. Now that you’ve grown up and have Geon to shield you from most of the adverse effects, you should be able to control yourself.”
“So, what you’re saying is that my Core was taken because, what? I was too strong?” Roy asked incredulously.
Wasn’t that a good thing? In the world of Martial Artists, the strong were always lauded, so why would his parents strip him of his power and send him away?
“Because you were out of control,” Azure said.
He looked back over his shoulder again, his eyes flicking back and forth in the darkness.
“I have to go now or I’ll be caught.”
Roy opened his mouth to argue, but Azure was quick to interrupt him.
“You’ll find the answers to all of your questions on the bottom floor of the Dungeon. Your friend will, too. I promise.”